Patent-Pending Skelebrator(TM) from Haestad Methods Drastically Reduces Water Distribution Network Model-Building Time

Leading-Edge Technology Targets Civil Engineers In Large Water Utility Market

WATERBURY, Conn. - July 23, 2002 - /PRNewswire/ -- Haestad Methods today announced the release of its patent-pending Skelebrator(TM), a powerful new water distribution modeling utility for automating the reduction of GIS, CAD, and existing modeling datasets to create more manageable networks. Skelebrator allows engineers to quickly and consistently prepare skeletonized hydraulic models that maintain network integrity and preserve hydraulic equivalency.

"Comprehensive GIS coverages and CAD datasets of water infrastructure often include a level of detail that is unnecessary for analyzing system hydraulics," said Wayne Hartell, Software Engineer and Lead Developer of Skelebrator for Haestad Methods. "This can include hydrant leads, service connections, and high levels of pipe segmentation for fittings and valves. This level of detail makes the model cumbersome to use, and in most cases provides no additional value to the hydraulic analyses. Skelebrator helps to remove the complexity from the data, while maintaining network integrity and the hydraulic equivalency of the system."

The key advantages of Haestad Methods' Skelebrator technology are:

• Intelligent network traversal algorithm - The network traversal algorithm automatically prevents Skelebrator from causing network disconnections that could invalidate the model. This approach is vastly superior to simple database queries that remove pipes based solely on attributes that meet user-defined criteria, potentially breaking network connectivity and removing critical links and nodes.
• Hydraulically equivalent skeletonization - Skelebrator preserves hydraulic equivalence allowing a greater degree of skeletonization to be performed without compromising the hydraulic behavior of the larger, more explicit model. Pipes with different attributes can be merged into a single, hydraulically equivalent pipe.
• Four customizable skeletonization operations - Skelebrator enables model reduction through any combination of customizable operations, including data scrubbing, branch trimming, series pipe removal, and parallel pipe removal.
• Automatic or manual process - Skeletonization can be performed automatically or manually, offering complete control over the process and providing a preview of the removal operation results before they are committed.

Other advantages include reusable skeletonization templates, four different demand aggregation approaches, and the ability to specify critical nodes and pipes, such as those supplying large industrial users, as non- removable elements.

"Our main goal in developing Skelebrator has been to maintain model consistency," said Jack Cook, Chief Scientist for Haestad Methods. "It's simple enough to turn a 25,000-pipe model into a 5,000-pipe model-the question becomes, how useful is that 5,000-pipe model Does it represent the network behavior with the same degree of accuracy achieved by the more complex model With Skelebrator, you can be confident that the resulting model is ready to run without modification. More to the point, the skeletonized model will provide results that are consistent with those produced by the full-sized model."

Skelebrator is included with WaterGEMS(TM), and is available as an optional add-on module for WaterCAD v6.0(R) Stand-Alone and WaterCAD v6.0 for AutoCAD(R).

About Haestad Methods:

Founded in 1979, Haestad Methods provides more than 125,000 civil engineers in over 170 countries with hydrologic and hydraulic computer modeling applications, continuing education workshops, and textbooks. Haestad Methods' complete suite of engineering software products for water, storm, and sanitary sewer modeling includes WaterGEMS(TM), WaterCAD(R), Darwin(TM), SewerCAD(R), StormCAD(R), PondPack(R), FlowMaster(R), CulvertMaster(R), HEC-Pack(TM) and Skelebrator(TM).

Haestad Methods trains thousands of engineers each year. It is duly authorized to award CEUs and PDHs and is licensed by Sandia National Laboratories to conduct RAM-WSM (Risk Assessment Methodology for Water Utilities) Training.

http://www.haestad.com/

http://www.watersecurity.org/

http://www.civilquiz.com/ 

 

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